If you're transitioning from single player to multiplayer, play the ranked ladder, do NOT play casual rooms

It’s interesting, only 30% of AoE3 players have the achievement on steam for winning a single multiplayer game, suggesting that most people play this game in single player mode. When I encounter people who say they mostly stick to single player, one of the main things they say is “well I tried multiplayer, but it’s not fun because I host a room or join a room for noobs only, but then higher skilled people inevitably join and stomp me”.

I think a lot of noobs see casual games and ranked games as the two options and assume “oh casual must be for noobs whereas ranked games must be where all the pros are”. That’s actually completely backwards.

Casual rooms are best used if you have specific people you already know who are at your level. In fact, they are commonly used at the very high level to setup matches for tourneys and for grinding strats, bc it can be hard for the very best people in aoe3 to find good games in quicksearch. If you are playing alone and you join a random casual game lobby, you will almost certainly either 1. get stomped or 2. stomp some poor person who is even more noob than you.

The solution is to play ranked quick search. This is an ingenious system that will quickly figure out your rank, and then match you against people who are a similar rank to you, so you can play fun, competitive games where you will usually end up winning or losing about half the time, unless you start making some actual progress in learning the game. The only thing is you will probably have to lose about 5-10 games before the ELO system will accurately rank you, so don’t worry about these early games. In fact, you might even want to just resign quickly in your first 5-10 games just so you can get ranked low sooner, so you can start playing fun games faster.

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Squamiger speaks the truth. random games are way better and removes the lobby stresses. i just wish i could build decks while cued up

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I always play using the casual lobbies and it normally works out fine. Granted I always play with my brother but even when I played solo it normally worked out ok

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building decks and checking out other people’s profiles while queueing would be a major quality of life change

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Ok that is funny :smile:
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The one problem is sometimes in ranked they will count a win as a loss or visa versa

When I first started playing, it was during the ■■■ end of TAD, circa December 2019. Back then, since quick search was already dead, I was left with no option other than to play the occasional games with my friends in the lobby. That was the good part.

However, if I ever wanted to play when they weren’t available, I’d have to join any one of the “Noob only” lobbies. Let’s just say actual ggs were few and far between. Why?

  • There’d be skill mismatches. Sometimes David and Goliath scenarios, but poor David has got no slings, rip. Also, you can’t win a game by throwing rocks (Iroquois-cos banned) at a Giant, peasant!
  • Encounter more smurfs than there were in the movie ‘The Smurfs(2011)’ even before Gargamel and Azrael chased the smurfs from the village. What the smurf!
  • Get tag-teamed by two brothers/sisters/they/thems/apaches who’ve known each other for years, gone to school together and are now best-est mensch in each other’s wedding ceremonies while you and your teammate have just been flaring each other up with the occasional 1(yes), 2(no). Talk about blue balls and mixed signals. smh.

Anyways, since the advent of DE, we have been blessed with an absolute banger of a matchmaking system at least for 1v1s, (cos 1’s all you need baby), and this time there are actual single males in my area(online-all regions) who want to knock me up, unprotected(no greatcoats), in Savanna amidst the Akan!

TLDR, Goodbye Tinder Plus, hello DE! Can’t wait to meet my very own David or Goliath in queue.
PS, size may vary, but as many female settlers are bound to say, it’s how you semi ff into 5 falc his/her ■■■ that really matters at the end of the day!

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yea but who cares. the point is to get good games, not to worry about elo. 99% of people are never going to get to the top tier level

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That’s why I play casual cause you don’t have to worry about your win to lose ratio. Your casual rank somewhat reflects your skill but not very accurately

All we need are different ranks for treaty and sup on lobbies as legacy had. Most times Im kicked from lobbys cause my high rank on treaty